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From: Erik Naggum
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: How to get a wider audience for CL
Date: 31 Aug 2002 01:05:44 +0000
Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway
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* thelifter@gmx.net (thelifter)
| Now my point is: most people don't like abstract high-level languages the
| same way that most don't like higher mathematics where you need to think in
| abstract terms. [...] And I think most people wouldn't like to think in
| abstract terms. The average programmer likes simple concrete languages like
| C.
Rather, the abstractions that C offers are considered more "natural" than
those offered by the extended Lisp family.
| I think maybe Paul Graham is right when he says: a language created by a
| committee is never a good language (or something similar).
I think Paul Graham is /fundamentally/ clueless about the construction of
large systems. His desire to go back to basics to design Arc is a symptom
of the intelligent, but socially immature hacker who thinks he knows things
better than most people and /therefore/ think that other people are wrong,
making sure there is a community consensus behind decisions and that you
have to accomodate more than one person to make something succeed. Some
people succeed in making communities -- Perl and C++ and Java come to mind
-- and some people fail miserably because they think too much in "my way or
no way" terms.
| Paul Graham is doing this, just go to his site (www.paulgraham.com) to learn
| about "Arc".
He is just another disgruntled Lisper who disrespects everybody who thinks
different from himself. The announcement of "Arc" destroyed much of my
respect for Paul Graham as an authority.
| But then why not reinvent Lisp? See above.
Because you end up worse than what we already have.
How come people with the most misguided political ideas believe revolution
is the answer and people with reasonable political ideas manage to succeed
in slowly transforming their society to their liking? Please think about it.
--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway
Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder.
Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.